“I think you made it clear I was that to you already, Ree.”
It was her turn for anger now. Her voice rose, shaking with every word. “I never considered you an enemy.I—”
“You what?” he asked.
I loved you.“So this is revenge then. That’s it.”
“No, princess. And if it were, it wouldn’t be againstyou.”
Her brows drew together in confusion. Something about those words troubled her.And if it were, it wouldn’t be againstyou. Who then?
Before she could ask what he meant, the air shifted. Ree looked up to see someone standing over her.
“I saw you at the hanging earlier, witch.” A man, big as an ox, with a suntan that strongly suggested he was just another drunken sailor. His smile reminded her of that alchemist who’d mocked Marcel. “I’m thinking maybe it should have been your black ass hanging from a rope right alongside him. You and thatn—”
Henryk slammed the man facedown against the wooden table, rattling their drinks.
Ree gaped. One of the dancers wending around the floor froze, snapping her feathery fan across her face, aghast. But Henryk didn’t seem to notice. He’d seized the man by both of his arms and twisted them painfully behind his back in a viselike hold.
“Stop. You can’t…you can’t do this.” The sailor’s glassy eyes filled with tears.
“And why not?” In the parlor’s silvery light, Henryk’s face was different. Cruelly alive in a way she had never seen before.
“But you’re a priest!” the man sputtered helplessly. He’d seen the dark dress, the crucifix at his neck. Ree could not blame him. It was an easy mistake to make. A foolish one too.
Henryk’s smile was cold. “I’m no priest.” He pulled the man’s arm tighter, contorting the bone oddly. “I can pray for you, if you like. Pray that this arm heals correctly. But I promise you by the time I’m finished with you”—Ree heard a sickening snap—“it won’t.”
The man shrieked. Hot tears streamed down the sides of his face and into his mouth. People were watching now.
But Ree understood. He was a witch-hunter. And he was right. He was no priest, no Father Antoine. The Church had seen him educated in a manner of ways that had nothing to do with saints and prayers. Inquisitions were nasty work. He would need to know the very specific art of torture—how to break exact points in the bones and joints, how to draw confessions from flesh by touching only the mind. The work of an Inquisitor lived in the dark threshold between suffering and sanity.
“Apologize to the lady,” Henryk snarled at the man’s ear. But the man kept blubbering, the pain too much. Henryk shoved the other arm, breaking it too. “Now.”
“I’m sorry!” He gasped. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m sorry—”
“Enough,” Ree said quietly. No matter the circumstances, she’d seen enough pain and misery for one day. And really, it wasn’t the man who was bothering her now. It was Henryk. Because this was not the Henryk she remembered.
“You broke my arms!” The man sobbed, red-faced and swollen from the tears.
“Be glad that’s all I did,” Henryk said, and let him go. “Now leave.”
The man stumbled off, in quick search of a healer, no doubt. Henryk turned cold gray eyes back on Ree. If he could reduce this man to a blubbering mess in a matter of seconds, she could only imagine what he did to witches.
His eyes were coolly appraising. Just who was this Henryk standing before her? He was a mystery to her—a stranger whose face she’d somehow always known.
Ree sipped from her drink. She realized her hand was shaking a little. “So, you take offense to my magic but not color?”
“No, I think I’ll leave that bit to the Brotherhood.”
“How noble of you, Inquisitor.”
Henryk didn’t say a word, his gray eyes watching her in silence. Her mother had warned her about the work of Inquisitors. They were hunters, skilled interrogators who played with their prey up until the moment of death. This might have been a harmless drink between…strangers. She might have a week to hold him off before she was dragged into confession. But there was no mistaking that tonight was only the first of many interrogations to come.
Henryk straightened his crucifix. “I bid you good night, princess.” He gave her one last once-over, but she couldn’t read him. “But we’re not done here. Far from it.”
Henryk turned to leave. He was threatening her; there were no two ways about it. And yet…she couldn’t think about any of that. The truth was, all she could think about was the day she’d left him standing all alone on that bridge.
In a burst of wild desperation, Ree shot out a hand, catching him by the wrist. “Did you come back to hurt me, Henryk? To make me pay for what I did to you?”
